Did Legend Bring About Superman?

W&m Professor Suggests John Henry Was Muse For Superhero

July 11, 2006|By Mike Holtzclaw, mholtzclaw@dailypress.com | 928-6479

Scott Nelson looks at Superman and sees a black Communist.

Nelson, a professor of history at the College of William and Mary, spent the past eight years researching the mythology of John Henry for his upcoming book "Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend," which will be published by Oxford Press in October.

In the course of his research, Nelson came to the conclusion that the visual images of the muscular railway worker -- a prominent symbol of the American Communist movement in the 1930s -- served as the inspiration for the first drawn images of Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster in 1938.

"I think it was an unconscious sort of thing," Nelson says. "Siegel and Schuster were both very liberal for their time, and they would have been very aware of the image that existed of John Henry."

According to a legend that originated in the 19th century, John Henry was a powerful African-American railroad worker. When technology threatened to make his job obsolete, John Henry said he could do his job -- either laying railroad ties or pounding excavation holes into rocks -- faster than a steam-powered hammer. In a contest, John Henry beat the machine but died in the process, emerging as a heroic figure to workmen.

In a chapter titled "Communist strongman," Nelson describes how artist Hugo Gellert, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary who became involved in radical politics, began producing deco-influenced lithographs of John Henry shortly before 1920.

"For Gellert," Nelson writes, "the balloon-muscled John Henry represented the dangerous and revolutionary potential of the male side of America's working class. John Henry was plastered on radical posters and magazines of the 1930s and appeared on countless posters for political rallies on the Lower East Side of New York. Workers like these were shown holding back the power of police and Nazis, and ushering in a worker's state."

Nelson believes the exaggerated muscles in Gellert's influential lithographs provided the genesis for the look Siegel and Schuster created for Superman, which itself then inspired subsequent comic book heroes such as Captain America, Captain Marvel and Wonderman. He says he first realized this while reading a "The Cultural Front" by Michael Denning, which describes how radicals connected to the Communist party created many of the pop cultural icons of the 1930s.

"In 1935 and 1936, these radicals were talking about John Henry, and it was in 1937 and '38 and '39 that they began to mainstream themselves," Nelson says. "With Superman, they took a black man and made him white and put him in tights. But he looks almost exactly the same, and he did all these left-wing things in the early comics. The early Superman was fighting landlords and slumlords and evil mine owners."

After America entered World War II, Superman was depicted fighting Hitler, Tojo and other enemy leaders.

In all the volumes that have been written about the history of the Superman character, Nelson has never found anything directly linking him to John Henry. But he notes that there was always speculation about what would have inspired Jewish cartoonists to create an All-American superhero. Nelson notes that these men were interested in left-wing politics and would have been very familiar with the image of John Henry.

"They took a legendary American character and turned him into a modern hero, a Samson for our time," Nelson says. *

SUPERMAN VS. JOHN HENRY

Professor Nelson says, M-tWith Superman, they took a black man and made him white and put him in tights. But he looks almost exactly the same, and he did all these left-wing things in the early comics.